When Satellite Reign is at its tightest and most focused, it delivers the thrill and tension of leading a small squad into a rat's nest of traps and more enemies than you can ever kill on your own.Įach enemy compound is a playground-like puzzle that tests your ability to manage your team's tools and abilities. This is problematic because Satellite Reign is designed for you to take advantage of specific character builds and to vary the tech of your squad members, but it took me nearly six hours with the game before I felt like I had a squad that was equipped and properly leveled to manage the tasks given to me. So, you begin the game relatively directionless as you take on random tasks, get new gear, and level up the skills of your mercs. Beyond gaining the credentials to move from one district in the city to the other, your only required objective in Satellite Reign is to infiltrate Dracogenics Tower. There isn't much in the way of "story" missions. The beginning of Satellite Reign is brutal and not especially satisfying. You work your way through the game's city in pursuit of evil Dracogenics employees whose control over resurrection technology - uploading your mind into someone else's body - makes them the most powerful corp on the planet. You control a squad of four mercenaries, each from a different classic cyberpunk archetype. Satellite Reign's approach to plot is bare bones it's more about dropping you into open areas and teasing new sandbox environments than telling an actual story. Starting a firefight in the hotel courtyard was probably a mistake. Satellite Reign is also never more than one click away from ruining your mission with poor pathfinding or encounters with enemies with fleeting attention spans. When Satellite Reign is at its tightest and most focused, it delivers the thrill and tension of leading a small squad into a rat's nest of traps and more enemies than you can ever kill on your own. Before it's all said and done, your squad might be equipped with poison-immune lungs, hive mind-hacking tech, cloaks, and cyber legs or laser shotguns with energy shields and high explosives. Satellite Reign lets you loose in a metropolis, where you're free to murder, sneak, and bribe your way to the top of the corporate ladder. But we find a little hiding hole, and five minutes later, it's like a gang of heavily armed thieves didn't just break into the largest gun-running operation in the Industrial District. A camera catches the fiasco, and enemy guards close in on our position. We silence a stray guard here and there, but a lone mech-bot catches us because our inept soldier decides to go his own way instead of staying with the group. They're going to leave a couple of gates unlocked. It's a risky operation, but the mercs have some valuable tech in their armory and the bosses want us to snag it.
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